CHAPTER 13.
Thugs and Poisoners.
Lieutenant Brown had come on to Damoh chiefly with a view to investigate a case of murder, which had taken place at the village of Sujaina, about ten miles from Damoh, on the road to Hatta.[1] A gang of two hundred Thugs were encamped in the grove at Hindoria in the cold season of 1814, when, early in the morning, seven men well armed with swords and matchlocks passed them, bearing treasure from the bank of Moti Kochia at Jubbulpore to their correspondents at Banda,[2] to the value of four thousand five hundred rupees.[3] The value of their burden was immediately perceived by these _keen-eyed_ sportsmen, and Kosari, Drigpal, and Faringia, three of the leaders, with forty of their fleetest and stoutest followers, were immediately selected for the pursuit.

They followed seven miles unperceived; and, coming up with the treasure-bearers in a watercourse half a mile from the village of Sujaina, they rushed in upon them and put them all to death with their swords.[4] While they were doing so a tanner from Sujaina approached with his buffalo, and to prevent him giving the alarm they put him to death also, and made off with the treasure, leaving the bodies unburied.

A heavy shower of rain fell, and none of the village people came to the place till the next morning early; when some females, passing it on their way to Hatta, saw the bodies, and returning to Sujaina, reported the circumstance to their friends.
The whole village thereupon flocked to the spot, and the body of the tanner was burned by his relations with the usual ceremonies, while all the rest were left to be eaten by jackals, dogs and vultures, who make short work of such things in India.[5] We had occasion to examine a very respectable old gentleman at Damoh upon the case, Gobind Das, a revenue officer under the former Government,[6] and now about seventy years of age.

He told us that he had no knowledge whatever of the murder of the eight men at Sujaina; but he well remembered another which took place seven years before the time we mentioned at Abhana, a stage or two back, on the road to Jubbulpore.

Seventeen treasure-bearers lodged in the grove near that town on their way from Jubbulpore to Sagar.